Persistence of Memory
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Harry has a brief conversation with the image of Hermione Granger in a place that has been rewritten and ponders some of the events in his life and the conclusions he has drawn. AU Spinoff to October, Death!Harry


**AN: A brief warning that this is a spin off to the heavily AU fic called October. I'm sure that if you were to read this by itself it'd make at least some intuitive sense but some of the details (how does an immortal Harry in space teach Tom Riddle wandless magic, etc.) come from that story. If you want this to make the most sense possible I'd read that first.**

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Something in his mind must have called to Hermione Jean Granger or perhaps only to her memory.

He did not sleep often, he'd learned he could function and live without it, but sometimes he did dream. As his thoughts wandered without the direction and determination of consciousness he found himself in the great city of Romulus that had been one of Earth's first interplanetary colonies built in the frozen red desert of Mars. Outside the window the neon junkyard that was the city could be seen, orange flickering signs winking out advertisements into the light polluted night, down on the streets swarms of people in heavy clothing could be seen walking from building to building.

He himself was in a luxurious high rise, the bed made of a sleek red fabric, the furniture all neatly polished and the latest technology having been incorporated for entertainment. It had been a long time since he'd thought about the first cities outside of Earth, he'd been drifting in purpose during the first efforts at colonization, without the name Harry Potter to carry him through he'd fallen into the trap called apathy for quite some time.

In the glass he saw his reflection, his new face, the face of the twelve year old Azrael in only his second year of Hogwarts. Dressed in the black, peasant's garb, that had been his final uniform in the culture of the last civilization he had known in his universe now though it was only the foreign clothing of a bizarre student who spoke in poorly constructed riddles rather than any real semblance of language.

Behind him a teenage Hermione stood in all her righteous muggle born fury having materialized along with the world although she had never visited the other planets in the solar system herself. She was wearing her Hogwarts uniform, the Gryffindor crest standing proudly on her chest like a beacon of hope, from the look of her he guessed she was somewhere around eighteen; the way she had been at the end of that very brief and rather pointless war in Britain.

"Harry, what do you think you're doing?"

He didn't turn, instead preferring to look out the window and note her movements through the reflection in the glass. "Waiting for the sunrise, even with the light pollution it's always been quite spectacular here; I suppose you never did get to see it."

"You know what I mean!" She said not taking the bait, "What are you doing with Tom Riddle? Don't you remember what he is?"

He turned toward her and whatever expression was on his face, whether it was one of total indifference, or a slight hostile narrowing of the eyes, Hermione took a step back at it as if looking at a complete stranger.

"Of course I remember, do you?" He asked softly.

She looked insulted, Hermione had always been so righteously insulted, about being muggle born, being a witch, about being just about anything really. In some ways it was in her nature to search for crusades, not that this was a bad thing necessarily, she just usually chose the causes that were most accessible to her. Still, he supposed, looking back she was the one he had remembered with the most fondness.

Strange, he had loved them all at one point, or at least he thought he had. Perhaps he had only thought it was love as he had once only thought he was human, Harry Potter's youth was filled with many such illusions. They had lasted quite a while, in human terms at least, but towards the end of things he had stopped thinking in human terms and that's when things fell apart. That portion of his life was so very small, nothing more than a blink.

Ginny and he had lasted for twenty years, three children, and two affairs. The end had been catastrophic, it was in that period where he was his most desperate in attempting to be human, and so while he understood why she was leaving he felt that losing her was akin to losing his humanity altogether.

He suspected that when they married there was still some of that hero worship in her eyes, and although she knew Harry as a friend and a man she still saw her knight in shining armor who shone so blindingly that his faults were not self-evident. Ginny did not recognize that when you marry the messiah you had best be prepared for some divine baggage to come with it. Then again he hadn't exactly been prepared for that either.

Ron and him had drifted, they had lost their ability to talk to one another, after Ginny had left he'd entered a period of deep depression. On his wall he had written in pen all the attempts to kill himself and all the ways he planned to attempt suicide when the latest attempt failed. Eventually Ron simply stopped trying altogether.

Such was the tragedy of attempting to play the human when you were really something else altogether. Cheap replications of humanity should know their place, because sooner or later everyone stops playing charades.

The teenage battle worn Hermione was yelling at him again in a room she had never lived to enter.

"You're teaching him wandless magic, not just wandless magic either, but really powerful magic! Harry, he was dangerous enough on his own!" In the corner of her eyes he could see tears beginning to gather, funny how even the long since dead could feel betrayal, "I understand why… You didn't have to kill him but couldn't you have just left that monster alone?"

What was this incarnation of Hermione Granger really, he thought to himself as he looked across at her, was she memory or the shade pulled from the veil? He had rewritten reality though, took one final look into the void of space and taken the train to the next great adventure. Hermione Granger had yet to be born, the Hermione Granger he knew would never exist again, she was paradox in the flesh.

"He's not very good at it." He assured her with a smile and just as he thought this caused her to bristle even more.

"That's not the point and you know it too. Just, tell me why, Harry." She sat down on the bed looking suddenly exhausted.

The dying light of the city cast shadows under her eyes, her skin seemed pale, and all at once she seemed older than any eighteen year old girl ever could be. He walked over and sat on the bed next to her, not taking her hand or looking at her, but sitting close enough to offer companionship.

"Defeating Voldemort was never my destiny," He said softly speaking as much to her as to the empty room, "I extend so much further beyond that, beyond my own universe even. I have seen my own empires rise and fall, I have seen great cities and men, and I have seen horrors beyond imagination. England is so small, Hermione, it's so terribly small."

She didn't interrupt, she was watching him carefully, trying to place the pieces together as she always did. Hermione Granger, so determined and intelligent and hardworking, yes in the end he suspected he had loved her the most.

"In Tom Riddle I see, possibility, almost endless possibility. He's capable of far more than Voldemort, and even if he must choose Voldemort, because of the timeline or something else he's still more than that in this moment. It's like Schrodinger's cat, until you open the box, the cat is everything it possibly can be. Until he becomes Voldemort, until he passes through that narrow door that is his future, he is all his probabilities."

She looked sad then, less tense, less angry, but incredibly sad for him as if she pitied him. "So even if he does become Voldemort, even if it's with your help, you'll just let him?"

"It's not always wise for me to meddle in human wars. That's what free will is for, after all."

"You sound like you think you're God."

There was an implied question in that statement one that he would not answer not for her or for himself. He had often wondered that at times, when he had finished wondering if he was that wretched thing called the Master of Death, when he had finally concluded that he was an abstract idea the avatar of Death itself, after that he had stared at his image and wondered if there was some power beyond him or if he was the beginning and the end of the universe.

He had become quite religious at the end, having a great faith in God, because something must stand above him or the weight of the universe would crash on his head.

"I'm told I speak like a man desperately trying to be a poet." He responded mildly to which Hermione smiled, who knew Tom Riddle had such a sharp sense of humor.

"Harry, I know things were difficult for you… but…"

She looked so young, he had once too, Harry Potter had looked young but Azrael had never managed that trick. It spoke of the millennia he had wandered that those words no longer phased him at all, when once they would have caused denial or anger or anguish, now they were only words that were heavily ironic in the understatement.

"Oh it's not so bad, once you get over the false pretenses everything sort of evens itself out. The key is understanding your place." He smiled at her, a smile that was inherently false, but the best he could manage for the moment.

"The Harry I knew would never say that."

The Harry you knew, he thought to himself, didn't even really exist. She didn't want to hear that though.

There was no longer any real point in dreaming of conversations that never took place, he closed his eyes and let her go and when he opened them only dim lighting and red sheets took her place. So now there he was, trapped in a timeless recreation from his memory, a world overwritten when in one final act of despair as he had taken the train, it really was the most accurate representation of it.

"What is this quintessence of dust?" He asked himself in a dull tone, expecting the dust to answer in its own negligent way. He sighed and the memory of the city faded from his mind as well leaving him on the edge of reality where another day at Hogwarts awaited.

As always when he left these unconscious discussions with the dead he thought to himself the grand conclusion that had taken him blood, sweat, tears, and years to reach, "The key is knowing your place."

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**AN: This was the 100th review fic for October the prompt by Salivour who requested a fic where Harry speaks to Dumbledore or another character in the afterlife giving a bunch of roundabout hints to stuff. I just couldn't see him speaking to Dumbledore in my head so we have an image of Hermione instead. Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**


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